Burning Down The House: What Caused Our Economic Crisis?

This YouTube video has a pretty clear explanation of how we got in this current mess, AND which party is the most to blame.

Funny Satire Blog

I just found this hilarious blog - it's probably not so funny if you've never lived in Utah, but check it out anyway. It pokes fun at Mormon mommy blogs (in a nice way).

Evil

It's happening everywhere - women being killed without remorse for the supposed honor of their families. Obviously, it happens frequently in the Middle East and the Muslim parts of Africa. After my experiences in Europe, I'm not surprised that it is happening more often there either. And now these evil philosophies of the devil are finding their way to America. I wonder how much play this story is going to get in the major media outlets? Will there be the same coverage that Stacey Petersen got? Or Lacey Peterson? Or that girl vacationing in Aruba (can't remember her name)? I bet not.

Satan sure has many different ways of attacking the family. Encouraging men to treat women like dirt has got to be one of the worst.

Blue Potatoes

Look what I found at the Stuarts Draft farmer's market - new blue potatoes for 99 cents a pound! They're actually purple on the inside. I roasted them with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper, and they were very tasty. I poked around online, and found recipes for red, white, and blue potato salad. They also had new Yukon gold potatoes, which are super good, too.

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary or Testing the Limits

Last night at bedtime:


K: I wanna go to bed.

Mom: Okay, let's go brush your teeth first.

K: Nooo, I don't want to brush my teeth.

Mom: (feeling rather tired) Okay, just go to bed.

K: NOOOO, I don't want to get cavities and have to go to the dentist.

Last Day of School

Every year on the last day of school, the teachers at the elementary school across the street give a very enthusiastic good-bye to the kids. Our neighbors brought out some watermelon, and we all sat under a tree and enjoyed the send-off.

Went to Target this morning. M is turning out to be a bad shopper. Lots of crying, cause she wants to get out of the cart and run away from me. So by the time we got out to the car, and I got everyone loaded in, we were ready to be home. Then I realized that I had left my purchases inside the store. Grrrrr.

Sniff, sniff

I have a great sense of smell. There's not much that escapes me in this department. When I was a kid I would smell the clothes that I opened up on Christmas morning and know which store they came from. I really ought to figure out a way to get paid for this talent of mine. I'm sure if I lived in a big city I could get a job testing perfume or something, except it would probably bother my allergies.


Anyway, about a week ago, I went visiting teaching to the home of an older couple. We went down in their basement, cause I had the girls with me, and they have a cool playhouse down there. So as soon as we get down the stairs I smelled an obvious smell of natural gas. I commented on it, and suggested that they call the gas company, but I could tell they didn't quite believe me. I know that sometimes older people lose their sense of smell, so my next plan was to talk to some of their children and get them to get on their parents to get it taken care of.

Well, last night she calls to tell me that she was thinking about what I said and decided to call the gas company. Sure enough, the gas man found three or four very small leaks. He couldn't smell them either, but his detector picked up on it. He told them that I must have a very good sense of smell.

Motherly Sympathy

It's possible that I don't have enough of it. Yesterday the girls and I were out in the yard, and S was barefoot, as she often is (I am totally in favor of letting kids go barefoot). She comes limping over to me at one point crying about her foot. So I take a look, and see a little thorn, and pull it out. She continues to whine and cry about it for about an hour, and beg for a band-aid. Now S used to be a very tough kid who could shake off most any injury, but lately she has turned very whiney - perhaps it's a five-year-old-thing. Anyway, that's my defense. So I continue to tell her to be brave, that it's no big deal, etc.

Then, I notice that our lawn, which consists mostly of clover, has quite a few bees in it . . . . and I realize that she had stepped on a bee! That explains why the thorn looked so odd - it was really a stinger. Oops!

Food Court Musical

This is so funny!

Our Society and Culture Today

FOXNews.com - 3rd Graders Plotted to Kill Teacher

I'm so glad I'm not in the classroom anymore. There is no pay raise big enough to compensate teachers for the way they are treated.

Garden Time!

I love this time of year! After anxiously studying the ground for days, today I finally saw some little teeny plants coming up. They're either kale or spinach - I can't remember which I planted where, and they're too small to tell the difference. It's been raining all afternoon, so by tomorrow there should be lots more stuff popping up. I cannot wait to eat some yummy homegrown lettuce (buttercrunch is our favorite), and peas. There is just no comparison when it comes to the taste, especially with peas. No matter how much you are willing to pay, you cannot go to the store and buy fresh peas picked that day from the garden. I've never seen them in a farmer's market either, although I suppose it's possible. So even though peas take a ton of space for what you get, we grow them. They taste like heaven! Last year I had to fight the girls to keep them from eating them all straight out of the garden. Someday, when we have a big yard and big garden, maybe I'll let them!

Digging around in the dirt is therapeutic. It's hard to feel depressed if you're on your knees with your hands in cool, dark soil tending to plants. I think the key to enjoying it is to not have more garden than you can handle, because then it just becomes a chore. We use the square foot method, which is so much easier than the traditional row method. It takes up way less space, no rototiller is needed, and it cuts way back on weeding. Who wants to spend all their time weeding? Uggh.

Here's a pic of our garden last spring. This was probably about a month after I had a c-section, so I was doing NOTHING outside related, and J didn't have much time to spend on it either. But it still looked good! This year, I am so happy to be in good health and able to get outside.

Praying to the Porcelain God

There's nothing like the stomach flu to make mundane household tasks seem positively exciting. It also gives me a reminder not to take good health for granted.

Time Change

I really hate time change. I'm ready to move to Arizona, or wherever they don't do it, except I don't want to move there. I think it is so unnecessary, and even detrimental to be messing around with everyone's internal clocks twice a year. I think they've even done studies on it, but I don't need to read about a study. All I have to do is observe my children. Tonight, K threw one raging tantrum after another. Really, they blended so seamlessly I'll have to call it one giant tantrum. She was so out of control for so little reason that Jeryl and I couldn't help but laugh. I even took some video of her, but she only had her underwear on, so I don't think I'll post it.

Tetris

I just got to level 20 on Tetris, with 169, 799 points! Level 20! Now I feel a sense of pride mixed with a lot of shame.

Sick of Suess

Took the girls to storytime at the library time. I was disappointed to see that the theme was the tiresome Dr. Suess. I should have known, since the newspaper is full of the annual Dr. Suess birthday celebrations throughout the community and schools. I'm tired of it! He's not the only children's author out there! Why does his birthday get so overcelebrated every year? I mean, come on, EVERY YEAR? It's not reasonable. It's boring. Even if I actually liked his books, it would still be too much. It's kind of like if the Relief Society had a birthday party celebrating its founding every year. Oh, wait, we do . . . and now I'm in charge of it.

Sleep

M took two naps today. They both were at an appropriate time, and were of an acceptable length. For both of these naps, I did NOT have to breastfeed her to sleep, and she did NOT cry. I laid her down and she went right to sleep! Bedtime also went perfectly. None of this should be anything to brag about, since she is ELEVEN months old, but sadly, it is a big deal! I think that this is the first time that it has ever happened! Not counting her first few weeks, when she would not wake up, even to eat, (and wasn't gaining enough weight, and I about died of stress), she has been the biggest stinker about napping! I had my other two on such good schedules, and they went down happily to nap, but M has really tested the limits! It's hard to believe that she is the same baby who wouldn't wake up as an infant. But the last few days, I have seen a gradual trend towards more normal sleep behaviour. Of course, time change (a big pet peeve of mine) is coming this weekend, and will probably ruin all of my efforts.

Now if she would just sleep through the night tonight . . . That's the next big battle.

Fire Restaurant Therapy

A few weeks ago we splurged and took the girls out to eat at a local Japanese restaurant, Massaki, where they cook the food in front of you on a large grill. The chef tosses knives, juggles eggs, and even has flames shoot off the grill five feet high. It's an entertaining show. We thought the kids would enjoy it. Well . . . S liked it, Marina was indifferent, and K was terrified. She was fine with everything but the fire. He only did it twice, but that was two times too many for her. She was crying so hard I had to take her out twice to try to calm her down. Fortunately, the place was almost empty. She ate one shrimp, one bite of rice, and spent the last half of the meal cowering under the table sobbing. I felt kind of bad about it, but we weren't about to leave and waste all that money!

Ever since then, she talks about it a lot, as in, "I don't want to go to the fire restaurant anymore." No worries. We won't be doing that again anytime soon.

Well, right now she's got her toy food and dishes out, and is playing restaurant. She says she is a cooker-man, and is pretending to make fire. I pretended to be a crying child, much to my daughters' amusement.

The Biggest Criers

Just watched The Biggest Loser. I've never seen so much crying from a bunch of men. These guys were sobbing like babies. Pretty impressive, really, especially considering that it's all in front of cameras. I wonder how much flak these guys are going to get when they're back home with their buddies.

Wild Monkey

I took S to the doctor this afternoon. As visits go, it was average. I've had much worse. Had to wait half an hour - most of it in the examining room (the worst place to wait). S and K's behavior was decent. But M is at the worst age! She was dying to get down and crawl around, and so the whole trip was a wrestling match between her and me. It was like holding a wild monkey. I'm not that paranoid about dirt and germs - I don't mind kids crawling outside if they're in old clothes. But I'm not too keen on examining room floors at 4:30 in the afternoon. Who knows how many gross things have been spilt, leaked, or dropped on them in the course of the day? Plus, I didn't have her in old clothes, because I always feel like I have to make an impression of motherly competence on the doctor.

I know when I take her back for her one year check up I'll have to give and let her explore; today was about all I could take. She kept head butting me in the chest. Hard. In case you don't know how that works: baby leans forward, bending at the waist, and then quickly slams her head back on you.

I've seen parents holding babies and toddlers older than M is, who are content to just sit on their parents' laps. It just amazes me. Once I saw my friend Missy hold her little boy, who was over one year at the time, on her lap for over an hour. He hardly even tried to get down. I could hardly believe it. None of mine have been that way.